sometimes it lasts in love
by Louise Foxhall
Summary: "...sometimes it hurts instead." For the Adele songfic challenge and the fanfiction FACTOR auditions on HPFC. Tonks is pregnant and Remus finds comfort in an old flame. Disc. I own nothing but please R&R.


**A/N: I have made alterations to the spacing now; I hope this reads better for you all :) **

_I heard that you settled down  
>That you found a girl and you're married now.<br>I heard that your dreams came true.  
>Guess she gave you things I didn't give to you.<em>

Electra Black sat alone, finishing a glass of wine in the small Diagon Alley bar and watching the early evening seep across the street through the wide glass window beside her; the shadows were lengthening, the streetlamps coming slowly to life, casting a burnished glow across the cobbles, and people were hurrying to leave before night truly set in, their chatter almost audible to her as they passed.

There was one young couple she watched with particular interest, a woman younger than her, much younger, her face still retaining the beauty of the youth she had not long left behind though there was a gravity to her expression that Electra could not quite place. The girl – for that was what she truly was – turned to her partner, placing a hand, bare save for a thin gold band, on his shoulder, and said something, lips quirking up at the corners, the soft swell of her belly only just noticeable. The man beside her smiled too, smoothing out the wrinkles on his prematurely lined face, and gently removed her hand, shrugging out of his brown jacket and placing it tenderly around her thin shoulders. Electra's heart constricted and she turned away from the window, her predicament so very clichéd, reminiscent of those Muggle movies she had never seen, separated from her former lover and the man she still loved, by a sheet of glass. Absently, she skimmed one finger round the rim of her glass, wondering if he knew that his wife was pregnant, for these things so clear to everyone else had often evaded Remus. She wondered how he would react; an involuntary swallow followed by a coldness so rarely seen, stealing across his usually gentle features, his jaw setting and his lips tightening…who was she fooling? Electra knew very well how Remus would react to the news of any pregnancy because she had seen it first hand when she had told him that she was carrying a child all those years ago. His child...

But perhaps he had changed; perhaps this girl with her radiant grin and pixie-like features had changed him in ways she could never know. She had after all, got his ring on her finger, something she – Electra – had never managed in the several years they had been together. Remus had always wanted to get married, to belong somewhere, to feel well and truly loved. With the life she had led, Electra just couldn't promise him that. Everyone she loved, she loved passionately but she hadn't been secure within herself at the age of nineteen, let alone able to provide security for another. Maybe, just maybe, this girl – this woman – could, maybe she was stronger than Electra ever had been, strong enough to let everything else go for the sake of the one she loved. Electra sighed and finished the last of her wine feeling deeply unsettled.

_Old friend, why are you so shy?  
>Ain't like you to hold back or hide from the light.<em>

I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited  
>But I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it.<p>

Her flat was spacious and well lit, comfortable and littered with soft couches, scattered with cushions but still Electra was restless, pacing. It was past midnight and still she slept not, kept awake by memories of mistakes past. She should never have gotten in so deep, never should she have let herself fall so far either, but never should she have let it go this far. The pride ingrained in her since birth prevented apologies that should have been made years ago. She had lost everyone she had ever loved to some cause or another but losing Remus to something as superficial as her pride stung. Tonight, of course, was by no means the first time Electra had seen her former lover in the years since their split but it had been a good year since their last meet and in the twelve months since he had been the only thing to occupy her thoughts, both in consciousness and in sleep.

The hollow feeling deep in her stomach was not a new one. She sighed and let herself fall into a chair, surrendering to this feeling of defeat and dark depression she had struggled to manage since her mid-teens, fumbling in her pocket for a cigarette and closing her eyes as she inhaled the first breath of smoke. The tightness in her chest expanded a little, giving her space enough to breathe once more, and as the light burnt out to a stub, she finally succumbed to a fit of restless sleep.

For a while, the only sounds to be heard throughout the flat were those of Electra's breath – in and out, in and out – and the rhythmic ticking of the clock to match until suddenly the quiet was shattered by a loud banging at the door. Startled, Electra woke, heart thudding against her ribcage in terror as she reached for her wand, these were dark times and there could be any number of people at her door. The knock came again, insistent. She padded silently to the door on bare feet, stumbling lightly over her discarded shoes in the hallway and stopping with her hand on the latch. Silence, stillness for a heartbeat and then, drawing in a deep breath she drew back the bolt and turned the key, opening the door wide enough to see the man stood on her doorstep, illuminated by the light of a streetlamp in the street behind.

"Remus?" the name left her mouth as a gasp. Remus, for it was he, bit his lip and his hand crept round his shoulder to cup the nape of his neck, worrying his skin between his fingers.

"Electra." His whole body was tense, fingers turned to claws, eyes hard, jaw set and his expression unreadable. For a long moment there was a silence so loud it spoke volumes to each, Remus's grey eyes holding her blue ones before the façade cracked and he broke down. He grabbed at her shoulders, pulling her to him, crushing her tight against his chest, sobbing desperately into her hair, choking on words she could not distinguish.

"She…She…Lexie, I've done something awful…She…Dora, she's…She's pregnant…." Electra sighed (so he did know) and drew him inside, pressing a feather-like kiss to the top of his head and settling him on the sofa she had just vacated, stroking his hair like she did Ivy's whenever her daughter was unwell.

"Shush…" she seated herself beside him and waited for the tears to stop. "Shush now, it will be okay, Remus. It will all be okay…" Minutes later, he drew in a shuddering breath and pushed himself up a little straighter, wiping the tears angrily from his face.

"She's pregnant," he repeated, with something akin to disgust in his voice. Electra laced her fingers through his and, for the first time, he truly seemed to notice her. "Lexie…" He dipped his head again, "I…I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come here, no warning, no…I just need someone, someone who understands." He turned to face her, eyes cast down and she saw the plea written across his features.

"It's okay."

_I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded  
>That for me it isn't over.<em>

The night soon became early morning, and as the alcohol flowed, Remus seemed to open up, to grow more relaxed. He seemed to forget the aching sadness that had not so long before consumed him and retained only a simulacrum of the shadowy demeanour he had possessed when he had arrived, although the coldness never left his eyes.

"…I thought I saw you earlier." He confessed to her, letting his arm drape easily around her shoulder, drawing her closer, needing to feel the comfort of his former lover, the girl who had brought him through so much, carried him so effortlessly, given him life when he'd needed it most. Electra twisted in his loose embrace to face him.

"I was in Diagon Alley, I saw you there with your…wife." She was reluctant to acknowledge this girl as a claimant to Remus's heart. He almost shrugged.

"That would be why." Electra smiled sadly, but said nought, having nothing to say to this, for, really, what could she say? "_I had hoped you'd see my face"? _I wanted you to guess – to know – how much you still mean to me?

Remus looked like he could sense the words on the tip of her tongue, his head cocked to one side, he surveyed her through half-closed lids, eyes lingering on her full lips for a second too long before slowly, deliberately leaning down to take them with his own.

Electra's heart thudded and then was cracked and mended at once. She had waited so long, been so patient and now she reaped the reward. He was slow, soft, gentle, not like times past when he had sought to take her all in at once, hungry and feral. He was hurting and she was making him whole. He wouldn't stay forever, he would go back to his wife, but tonight would be enough for her.

_Never mind, I'll find someone like you  
>I wish nothing but the best for you too<br>Don't forget me, I beg  
>I remember you said,<br>"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead,  
>Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead,"<br>Yeah._

Sleeping with a married man was bad, she was sure, but Electra couldn't make herself regret it as the two of them lay sated, in a post-coital haze, between the tangled sheets of her bed, separated now only by a thin second skin of cotton, fingertips still touching. It brought back memories she had long buried, waking beside him in a shared bed, faces never far from one another's, memories that bathed her in sunlit warmth as she recalled them and doused her with cold shivers as she remembered what could never be the same.

Remus slept still, the hard setoff his jaw smoothed out in sleep, appearing the young man he was as his sandy hair, shot with silver and grey, fell into his eyes. Electra propped herself up on one elbow, pulling the sheets tighter around her abdomen as she did so, and reached down to brush his fringe from his face. He didn't stir at his touch and she was left to study him some more, the scars he abhorred but she had always secretly love, running from the one just above his left eye, down along his jawline, both his shoulders, his stomach, his back and further; along his arms and his legs, faded now but still visible against his pallid skin. She saw the purple bruises under his eyes and wondered as she always did when the last full moon had been and when the next was coming. She had long lost track of the phases of the moon but couldn't help but notice how tired he looked, even as he slept. She hoped, again, that he was happy. Remus deserved better than what she could offer him; one night stands and awkward, bitter goodbyes. She was sure he had never forgiven her for what she had done after James's death and she knew that she wouldn't either. She had loved him enough to let him go once – though, in truth, her flight had been more of an escape at the time – and now it was time to let him go a second time.

She would never find love like his again but he had found it for himself with her pretty little cousin, she just had to hope he would remember her, not this woman she had become, welcoming him into her bed without second thought – he would hate himself in the morning, though it would be her fault again that this was where they had ended up – but the girl he had once fallen in love with. She wanted that girl – the Lexie he had talked of earlier – to be with him always.

Remus had said to her once, once when he had let things come between them, he had said _"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead" _but he'd always come back in the end until she'd left him. It struck her now that Remus had done another of his famous disappearing acts; he'd done something he perceived as wrong or dangerous and had left, tail between his legs, to eradicate said danger but, in truth, had only made it worse. Electra knew she was going to have to encourage him to go home herself and she knew it would break her heart.

_You know how the time flies  
>Only yesterday was the time of our lives<br>We were born and raised  
>In a summer haze<br>Bound by the surprise of our glory days_

It seemed only yesterday that he was truly hers; waking up beside her every morning, holding her close just to hear her heartbeat sound in time with his own. Those days, especially her schoolgirl summers, had been the best of her life, living an extended fantasy, the horror and harsh reality of real life always just out of sight enough for them to feel safe. But this was her reality now, a lonely woman with a daughter all grown up, still in love with the man she had fallen for aged just sixteen. She wished for one more glorious summer to spend like that, just one more, but of course that time had gone, flown away on the wings of Fate and had left her, standing stock still in a world that was always moving.

_Nothing compares  
>No worries or cares<br>Regrets and mistakes  
>They are memories made.<br>Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?_

Remus woke eventually, and just as predicted, was sullen and cold, looking at his bare chest and the sheets between himself and Electra's barely clothed body.

"Did we…?" he swallowed, unable to finish the sentence. Electra nodded. He rolled out of the bed and snatched up his clothes without another word and dressed hurriedly, his back to her, guilty. Just another barrier created betwixt them. There was a time when this would have been common place, having taken place for love and without regret but whatever the circumstances, a bridge had been burned, there was nothing to take back – just another memory for them both to lock away in the vaults they left locked in their minds.

She walked him to the hallway. He opened the door and made to go, leaning down and placing a final, bittersweet kiss on her lips. She tasted salt and was surprised to find that they both were crying.

"Remus, I…"

"Say nothing. I'll only stay." And she knew that however much she wanted to change it, he had to leave. He had a family now. One that did not include her but another woman.

"_Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead"_


End file.
